Ranked #5409

Mars of Destruction

This is by far the anime medium's magnum opus. Mars of Destruction is the best animated movie I've seen in years, if not ever. In terms of science-fiction related media, this blows other greats such as Heinlein's works, Battlestar Galactica, and Neon Genesis Evangelion out of the water. Truly an experience I will never forget, and oh, what an experience it was!

Story: 10/10
This film is highly philosophical. I actually felt regret when the Big Bad Ancient Guy told Random Armored Cop Dude that the humans were the true invaders of Earth. This plot twist was stunning and, on the whole, thought-provoking. It was like something written by Kafka.

Art/Animation: 10/10
This movie is so amazing that it actually makes DEEN's animation look like Madhouse by comparison. It gave me more appreciation for other anime titles! I love you, Mars Of Destruction!!!

Sound: 10/10
The voice acting is absolutely perfect. When the characters yell each other's names repeatedly you will FEEL the emotion. The OST recorded by Beethoven himself is also marvelous. He did an excellent job, as always.

Characters: 10/10
The characters are all equally well-done, from Green Hair Girl to Blue Hair Girl; it's so easy to tell them apart! I especially enjoyed the doctor's dialogue, as I would not have known that the girl whose head exploded was dead without his helpful reminder that "she won't make it."

Enjoyment: 10/10
This picture is absolutely riveting on every level! I could watch it over and over and never get bored!

Overall: 10/10
Run, don't walk, to your nearest YouTube to catch this masterpiece as soon as possible! You won't regret it! read more

After watching this, I just felt that I simply HAVE to write a review for this masterpiece. Why is this a masterpiece, you ask? Simple, because it's the only Sci-fi/Horror anime which ever made me laugh so hard.

Story:
The story... Wait, what was the story again? Apart from whatever that was said in the synopsis, there is pratically no storyline at all, it's just about a bunch of girls working for the police fighting off the 'Ancients' alongside a guy who was forced to wear a suit developed by his father to fight the 'Ancients', and how much killings they saw on the way while delivering the bits from the wrecked Mars exploration ship to America, and how they eventually found out that Martians were Earthlings and Earthlings were Martians.

Art:
The art is simply amazing. It's old for a 2005 anime, and the animation is just so stiff. I think even 1980s anime/OVAs like Gunbuster and Mobile Suit Gundam has better art and animation than this. The only saving grace is how bloody the massacres were.

Sound:
The voice acting was horrible. The only thing I found nice to hear were the moanings of dying people, and the growling of the 'Ancients'. And as for the music, I could've sworn I heard a few classical pieces in the background.

Character:
It would be difficult to identify the characters if not for them having different genders and looks, for there is no distinct characteristics for the different character. The only distinctive traits the characters ever have are their looks and their voices. They might as well make every single character look and sound the same, since it would save them the trouble from having to think of how each and every character would have to look and sound.

Enjoyment:
This is where this OVA shines. The enjoyment factor. As I've said before, never has any sci-fi/horror series made me laugh as hard as this did. I laughed when the ship at the beginning blew up, I laughed when the girls were so stupid that they stood still and didn't run as the 'Ancients' charged up and fired their beam at them, I laughed when one of the girls got her head blown off, I laughed when the policeman was torn apart, I laughed when the main dude in the suit didn't know how to use his other free hand to attack the main 'Ancient' when his sword arm was stopped, and then later broken and dislocated by the 'Ancient', I laughed when the professor in the US said that the DNA found on Mars belonged to Homo Sapiens, I laughed when the 'Ancient' began to speak, I laughed when he said that Earthlings were Martians, and Martians were Earthlings. I was laughing throughout the entire show.

So overall, all I have to say is, if you've got about 20 minutes of your life you would like to waste away, please, PLEASE, do catch Mars of Destruction. :D read more

This anime is...not very good. In fact...it's sculpted out of shit. No point whatsoever in this anime. Only reason somebody could ever watch this show is because it is the most lowest rated peice of trash on MAL. Heck, that was actually the reason I watched it.

Story: Well, I've seen powerpoint presentations that had more plot than this anime...even a video of someone playing tetris may very well have more plot. Unfortunately for this anime, its "plot" was the best thing about it.

Art: Seems as though the developers took every single opportunity they had to NOT move the characters...not move anything in fact. The beginning credits seem good as they come in and then you realise that they just disappeared. No fade. No nothing. Complete crap. You'd think that the developers could have at least not screwed up the opening credits. But no...they did.

Sound: Classical music? Riiight...at least they could have picked the right music, but no, they picked music during the combat that made it seem like the main character (wait, there are characters in this?) was dancing with the alien. Completely out of place music, none of which was made by the developers of this anime. All free stuff that can be downloaded off the net. This anime brings shame to this music.

Characters: Lol.

Enjoyment: Well, no matter how sad of an excuse this is for an anime, it still has some good points, such as...wait, no it doesn't. Also, you'd think that this anime is worth watching just to laugh at how shit it is, but it's actually worse than that. There is nothing to laugh at except when some random girl gets her head blown off. In fact, that is the only reason I am giving this an enjoyment rating of 4.

Overall: Completely terrible anime. Only anime that is worse than this shit is Girls Bravo with english dub. read more

"Give me back my precious 19 minutes that I've wasted!"

Wow, talk about low quality production. I hate to rate a show badly but I feel the scores I gave it is justified. Actually, this OVA does not even deserve to be reviewed (I end up wasting a lot more minutes typing this than the 19 minutes for the show). However, just so that hopefully no one else will suffer what I suffered, I'll write down my sincere thoughts about this anime only known as Mars of Destruction.

At first, the synopsis reminded me of the epic PC game series known as "Doom". Monsters from Mars... invasion of Earth... some hero-wanna-be fight for Earth...etc. I am impressed how well the synopsis sums up the ENTIRE show.

I believe every story has a moral message and Mars of Destruction, while being terrible in almost every single category, also has its own theme. In a very indirect/lame way, the show (I think) is trying to say something along the line of human (ie. us) is invading/killing Earth. Perhaps the author also believes that if we don't take care of Earth, someday aliens will come and get rid of the parasites on Earth (*shrug* That's just my take at the moral behind the story).

For a 2005 piece of work, the animation and sound are mediocre at best. Sluggish character movements plus choppy low quality sound effects. Actually, the only music in the anime sound like those taken straight out of some 90s demo game. The producer, Idea Factory, certainly has no idea what it is producing.

The most pathetic part about Mars of Destruction lies in the characters. The main characters, being the "elite" of the police forces, are extremely clumsy and slow reacting. Not sure if the problem lies with the story or the way things are animated, but either way, the problem is just so glaringly obvious (with the characters) that they are enough to completely distract the viewers from the story itself.

I wish I can go back in time and tell me past self to spend those 19 minutes more wisely. I hope no one will make the same terrible mistake as I did. Stay away from this! read more

When I first heard about "Mars of Destruction" I took a slight interest in watching the show. I remember one of the first things that came to my mind was "I wonder when it comes out". But any sense of optimism I may have had for this show quickly dissipated upon realizing that no, this series wasn't rated worse that 2000 on the site because it was pending release; it was rated worse than 2000 because it was THAT bad. Upon experiencing this sudden revelation, my optimism was replaced with a sort of sadistic feeling; the kind of feeling that might lead you to watch something bad just to rip it apart. So I went into "Mars of Destruction" with this mindset (as I'm sure many of my fallen anime brethren have) and prepared myself for a show shameful enough to bear the rating of 1/10.

And it was...actually not as bad as I though it would be...

...Now don't get me wrong, this is by no means in any sense of the term a good anime. With a 2.69 average rating on MAL, I'm sure our little community can attest to that, but if you go into this show expecting it to scar you for life, you'll probably end up being disappointed. But perhaps that in itself is proof of this anime's utter failure. It is bad enough that it can not be considered good, but not so bad as to be entertainingly awful to the point of being able to say "Oh, I just did it for the experience". I guess what I meant to say was, it's not as bad as I thought it would be...but it's fairly close.

A lot of people seem to think there was no story for this show. I'm going to clear that up for you. There was a story...it just sucked. The story itself was fragmented and didn't really have a proper beginning or end. Instead of giving you a coherent start or finish, the viewer is thrust into the middle of inter-planetary fighting that while being easy to follow, has no prior story backdrop to explain it. It feels like fighting just for the sake of fighting more than anything. Oh, and to make matters worse, the fighting isn't even entertaining.

I never found myself invested in this show in the first place so with 0 expectations, there was almost no way to disappoint me...except that they had to go and use classical music...

I love classical musical for it's intricacy and musical mastery and this show took a perfectly good thing and ruined it for me. When I listened carefully, I could have sworn I heard "Reinhard von Lohengramm" crying off in the distance somewhere. He would have been ashamed to have shared any of the same music with this show. They did a terrible job selecting and syncing the music to the action on screen. But even the terrible music selection can't hold a candle to the worst sound problem, that is, when there was no sound at all. More often than not, there was absolute silence and awkward pauses between character dialogue or combat. This made for a rather underwhelming experience devoid of any emotional submersion.

Characters...no. Other reviews have covered this. The characters are absolute rubbish. The only way to really tell them apart is by their hair colour. We also have one male "lead" (if you wanna call him that) who after the first 5 minutes and a little 30 second flash back can best be described as Shinji Ikari's less interesting and manly cousin. As a viewer, there's absolutely no relateability or emotional investment in any of the characters and I found myself rooting for the death of the character cast. I felt at moments as if the "bad guys" were on my side. The aliens were going to carry out justice for us. I could envision them saying "Don't worry viewers, we'll take care of these characters. We're sorry you had to go through this but it'll all be over soon". Sadly, even that didn't happen. Oh, people died. Ya, "Security guard C" and "Pedestrian J" might have died but killing off our little character cast...Oh no, that would have been too easy.

Of course this leads us to Enjoyment. Well it wasn't painful. That's about it though. I gained absolutely nothing from this anime. I don't feel traumatized but I don't feel any different. It's sort of the feeling you have after your birthday. "No mom, I don't feel any different now that I'm 17." That's probably the best way to describe what I was thinking after I finished Mars of Destruction.

As an added bonus, here are some fun facts:

1. Writing this review was my favourite part of this series.
2. After analyzing my review, I lowered my score from a 4/10 to a 3/10
3. This was my 100th entry on MAL (Some milestone 'eh)


Why would you watch this show? Well I suppose if you're looking to lower you're lists' mean score you might wanna give this a shot. 2.69 ain't that great. Although .269 keeps you in the Majors. Haha. (That was a terrible joke, my apologies.) Mars of Destruction might not win my award for the worst thing I've ever seen, but I can't say it wouldn't get the nomination.

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I decided to watch this because of many people were saying it was bad. I actually had no other intention. While I was watching this, the only thought I had was: "Why the fuck was this even aired?" It was THAT horrible.

Story: 1/10 (Because I cant give it a zero)
There isnt a story. What the hell were they thinking even writing a synopsis? There isnt a plot. Zero. None! NOTHING. Ok. Aliens attack earth, its so cliche, but they never even explain why, who the 3 random girls fighting the aliens are, and who the friggin kid in the suit is. The OVA isnt "horror". Sure its got the random gore and bloody scenes, girls getting heads ripped off and such, but other than that, its hardly even flinchable. Sci-fi.. Sure. A ship blows up... or... More like FALLS apart. Dude, that wasnt an explosion. Why am I even bothering to continue?

Art: 1/10
Judging from the picture on the MAL page, I was expecting more than I got. The art is HORRIBLE in every way. These people dont even blink. The shading was bad too, but the art just plain sucked. The colors made it look like it aired in the early 90s with its dark colors and awful shading, when really it was released in 05. The MAL page is actually nicer than the anime put together. And what the hell kind of aliens where those? They looked like people in suits, I was so expecting something gruesome and ugly, but they were so bland... The background... I cant even describe the badness of it. Lets just say they were as crappy as the so called aliens.

Sound: 1/10
Ive never heard such an awful choice of sounds and music. The effects made the feel of it being made in the 90s even worse. They sounded like they came from a 80's movie, even the gun shot sounds were bad. The music sounded like it was ripped from the internet and used in the wrong places. It was all classical with some lady singing opera. What the hell? I think in the places without music, it was a bit better. Other than that, the music was just... Bleh. But not enough to mute the player.

Character: 1/10
This section REALLY needs a 0 rating. There were characters... But they were just THERE. They were all bland, no backgrounds, no emotions. When one of the girls died, no one cried, no one even LOOKED at the dead body. I think the only person that HAD a name, was the kid in the suit. Which I dont even remember what it was. Then the aliens, the god damn aliens that I got reallly annoyed with. They suddenly could TALK which made NO sense whatsoever. Im not even going to go any further, for I think you get the picture.

Enjoyment: 1/10
Do I REALLY need to explain WHY I gave it a one?

No?

Then... Im not going to.

Just.... Dont add this to you plan to watch list, dont watch it. Its not worth any bit of time you could be using to watch a perfectly decent anime. read more

Mars of Destruction was one of the most insightful OVAs I've ever come across. Everything in it felt meaningful and deep. All the various unique and clever metaphors were astonishing.

With a well constructed, thought-provoking story, interesting characters, and incredible animation, Mars of Destruction is one of the most worthwhile pieces ever in the history of anything.

Story!
The story follows a guy that is forced, by his dad, to fight evil creatures from Mars with a powerful suit - completely unaware of a complex conspiracy. It's really original and intriguing.
What stands out the most about Mars of Destruction is how thoroughly it examined all angles of it's story, leaving no loose ends and providing a fulfilling climax.

Art!
MoD had some of the most detailed settings and character designs I've ever seen. All motions were fluid and life-like. I'd even go so far as to compare it to recent works of SHAFT or ufotable.

Sound!
Voices were amazing, soundtrack was breathtaking, and sound effects always sounded just right.

Characters!
Everything about every character, even minor characters, was thorough - sometimes inspiring. No character was left underdeveloped. They were all realistic and believable.
Girl from AAST was my favorite character. I felt a truly deep connection to her, as if she were a lng lost lover.

Enjoyment!
I loved every second of this masterpiece. It was good clean, quality entertainment. There wasn't a moment of dullness or mediocrity.

Overall!
Well worth a viewing. It was outstanding in every sense of the word.



[/sarcasm] read more

This is not a series, this is a twenty minute OVA and wow, what an experience that was. It is impossible to experience angst, sorrow, joy and enlightenment in a mere third of an hour but Mars of Destruction amazingly pulled it through. I’ve never been so moved in my entire life. Mars of Destruction is definitely a must watch.

The story? The entire synopsis is the story. No need for further explanation, it’s all there.

Animation? Cars being blown up, decapitated chick’s head, girls with guns, and not moving characters! All that you’ve ever wished for an anime to present, you can actually see here.

Music? This is what you call music! Beethoven’s compositions and some random manly moans! Ahhhhh! Orchestra music while chicks are firing guns. This is where the anime shines. Where could you ever see this ingenious combination? Only available in Mars of Destruction!

Characters? Yeehaw! This is what modern anime characters should be like. Mars of Destruction has the epitome of character creation. Never will you see one in your entire life that could move you into tears or that could make you bursting into laughter. The decapitated chick was the best character in my opinion. Awesome characters are just awesome.

Enjoyment? Never had I watched a twenty minute anime that made me laughing for the wrong reason. If I had to rate the enjoyment, it would be 10000000000/10. Best anime of the century, or even the millennium, or most fitting would be FOREVAARRR!!

What? Watch this? OF COURSE!

……

If ever you wanted to experience the day that you’re now in your death bed and while looking back at your life, you’ll eventually question yourself, “Why did I watch that fucking 20 minute piece of garbage?” read more

This anime is EPIC!!! It's blimey epic for how terrible it is. I can't even believe they call this waste of 20 minutes a episode of anime. Everything in this anime was like a portrait, I've seen slideshows made by elementary school kids with better animations and special effects.

Story: Huh?? Pardon?? Some story actually existed?? All i remeber watching was a bunch random scenes totally unrelated to each other all joined together. You could say each scene was from a totally different anime. There was absolutely ZERO plot because i think those 30 second T.V advertisements have more plot than this thing.

Art: The artists and animators that made this anime seriously needs to go change occupations. Every single character had no facial expression and minimal movements at all times. The characters in this anime can't even blink. 99% of the random little miscellaneous flash animations have better art and animation than this so called 'anime'.

Sound: Every single piece of music used in this anime can be classified as free classical music. They used some opera music with a fat lady screaming for the opening theme. Those makers used another random piece of classical music during the 'legendary' battle scene which was consisted of the main bad dude 'teleporting' around and strangling a bunch of random girls but never managed to kill a single one of them. And guess what they used for the ending theme, yet another piece of random classical music.

Characters: The so called 'main' characters consisted of a group of clones all with an identical face and body structure. The only way you can differentiate them from one another was that they all had different hair colours and styles. The character's personalities and individualism were not developed at all because after watching it, i can't even recall a single character's name or what they looked like. Also, all of the characters had two different weapons equiped on them, a assault rifles that fires blue bullets which was accompanied with blue muzzle flashes and LOADS of machine gun sounds. They also all carried a cheap yellow glowstick/lightsaber replica that makes a vacum space around them every time it is activated.

Enjoyment: Nothing was enjoyable in this pathetic piece of crap. The only part that interested me in the whole anime was some random nameless clone girl getting her head nailed off (Elfen Lied style) by some yellow laser beam. This is the sole reason why i gave enjoyment part of the score a 3.

Overall: I think this anime is the lowest rated anime on this site for a very good reason. It's almost bloody unwatchable. If you are considering about watching this anime, then i highly recommend you to forget about that thought right now. You will be better off to go do something random and creative, like water the plants in your garden or go for a run around the block. This anime is just not worth it!!!! read more

This is the best title I've ever seen. The second 10 score in my rating since Rebuild 2.22.
Neophytes and schoolchildren won't understand, so I'll explain sense of this show-for-all-times.

Obviously it is none other than delicate parody on 95% of anime series. Mars of Destruction includes most of anime cliches, and all of them are made in 20 minutes.
I'll try to recall some of those moments, which drove me into ecstasies.

First of all, bunch of nameless multicolored-hair girls as the Super Defending Power of Earth. In other titles their names are generated via randomizer ans nobody remembers them, but here this problem is solved.
Then, the greatest joke in anime ever: "Sorry, looks like she died" in hospital after girl's head being completely blown off.

Second point is the Simple Japaneese Schoolboy as SuperHero in charge of saving Earth from SUCH monsters. He has superpower-suit and he don't want to be a hero, but he MUST to protect those he loves.

When it goes to battle scenes, Mars of Destruction is also inimitable. Action to all fields, oh man, these fights will make your heart tremble, just like we saw in NGE. Main Evil Guy revives after being defeated as he gathered together all his remaining strenth, OH WOW, don't you recall some series with resemble turn of plot? I think, every second.

Main story is also shocking and unpredictable, with deep and philosophical outcome.
In other banal series absolutely same plot is usually being prolong for 20+ episodes and provokes tons of happyness, you know - oh my god, SUCH DEEP IDEA, we are invaders, and THEM are real earthlings, i'm going to give "10"!

I'm finished. Please, be thankful to Idea Factory. They, geniuses, catched the essence of anime and crystallized it. read more